Allying with Assad would be worse than poor strategy; it would be morally unacceptable to anyone with an ounce of decency, and to anyone with the slightest stake in identifying and punishing his crimes.

Just after dawn prayers, my Twitter newsfeed was filled with breaking headlines confirming that the US along with its Arab allies had begun airstrikes against ISIS in the Syrian city of Raqqa. Both the Assad regime and the Obama administration have denied any collusion regarding this military offensive but if you scratch beneath the surface, it becomes relatively clear that there was a lot more collaboration behind closed doors than most would think.

Last year David Cameron pledged his support to President Obama in confronting the Syrian regime. The pledge was wrecked by Ed Miliband, for narrow political advantage. Had action been taken a year ago, we wouldn't have heard of ISIL/ISIS and its latest incarnation, so-called IS.

If there is any lesson to be learnt from history, it is that political alliances always shift according to self-interest. This is also apparent in playground politics between children - you change friends and foes according to benefits.

The inconvenient truth is that the collective punishment of the Pales­tinian people in Gaza is a collective endeavour in its own right - led by Israel, enforced by Egypt, endorsed by Saudi Arabia. Pity the poor Palestinians. Their territories are occupied by the Jewish state; their cause is abandoned by the Arab world.

Despite the existence of other international crises, the civil war in Syria and its effects remain. Three years on from the beginning of protests against the dictatorial rule of President Assad, the original struggle for greater rights in a tyrannical state has morphed into an armed revolution.

May 29th marked the 101st anniversary of the premier of The Rite of Spring, the brilliant musical composition attributed to Igor Stravinsky, and performed by Sergei Diaghilev's - The Ballet Russes Dance Company, in the City of Paris, France of the year 1913.

So what can Muslim women do to stop young Muslims from going abroad and getting involved in the Syria conflict? Well women can be the first to see behavioural changes amongst family members including a preoccupation with the Syria crisis.

When the House of Commons voted to reject military action to protect the citizens of Syria from tyranny - both political and religious - MPs plunged this country, and the world, into the terrifying situation that exists in the region today. Non-intervention has cost Britain and NATO respect on the international stage...

Syria lies broken, bloodied, but not quite dead. Faint flickers of national life before the civil war remain, but these are fast being snuffed out; victims of territorial conflict, over which existing democracy and the soothing voice of international arbitration can exert no influence.

A year ago the villages of Jebel Akrad were home to living, breathing communities. Tucked into the mountain range in Syria's northwestern corner, the village squares were occupied by old men drinking strong coffee and puffing on cigarettes...

Syria has been facing disaster - humanitarian and military - for three blood-soaked years. A recent event has rocked this already volatile region, and deepened the divisions within all sections of society, increasing the chance that this war will be even longer and bloodier than first thought. The Islamists are coming, and this represents an even stronger reason for the West to intervene.

Can we trust Bashar al Assad and his regime, which systematically destroyed the country over nearly three years, with the re-building of Syria? Thanks to Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama, Bashar al Assad is staying on until at least the summer of 2014 under a dubious deal to dismantle and destroy al-Assad's stockpiles of chemicals and gases.

Iran's government has tricked us all. With the ascension of Hassan Rouhani - a high ranking cleric - to the Presidency, the nation's theocratic leaders endeavoured to demonstrate that they had moved away from the geopolitical machinations of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's court...

As Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has taught for the past 58 years, Chomsky has long courted controversy with his criticism of the legitimacy of American power from his position on the American left...